My (31F) husband (30M) and I have been together for 15 years, married for 3.
I went to college in 2012, and he was still in high school. During this time, I made a series of absolutely vile and terrible decisions: I had an emotional and physical affair with someone else. I will not give excuses about my trauma or childhood, because nothing excuses my horrible actions. AP lived in my dorm in college and was in my friend group. We didn’t have sex, but we did everything else. We were on and off for most of freshman year. I would end it quite often, because I felt guilt and shame and because I questioned why I was doing this, but my selfish desire for validation and attention brought me right back whenever he would try to start it up again. Eventually it became too toxic and we stopped in May 2013. I fell back into my selfish ways and we resumed for one month in September of 2014, the beginning of my junior year. This ended when I realized he didn’t actually care about me and he was seeing other women. I was a terrible and selfish human being who wanted to feel cared for by two men at once. During this time my boyfriend was not aware, and I was a coward and never wanted to tell him. I foolishly believed that I was saving him from pain by not telling him, and vowing to be the best girlfriend I could be for the rest of my life.
Words cannot describe the level of regret, pain, and guilt I feel from my choices. I lived in agony imagining the pain my boyfriend would feel if I told him, and I couldn’t face it. For the next 11 years, I was faithful (I know this is the bare minimum) and supported him in every way I could. We moved cities for his dream, I financially support him, and I helped him through medical issues and drug addiction (something he is still coping with). I know this is how I should’ve acted throughout our entire relationship. However, I still felt fear and guilt every day, and for over a decade I didn’t sleep or eat well.
6 weeks ago I knew I needed to confess, he needed the truth. I sat him down and told him everything I could remember. I gave full details and did not hold back any of the physical acts.
Over the next few days, I couldn’t move or eat or stand. When we spoke I usually sat naked on the floor. His initial reaction was shock, then anger. He started punching things and making demands, saying he was going to have a revenge affair and would make me watch. He wanted to have a 3 way, even if it made me uncomfortable and wasn’t something I wanted. He wanted me to bring him to the strip club and pay for lap dances for him. He wanted blow jobs every day from me, and we started having a lot of sex.
He told me he would break my laptop, and he’d make me call my father and recount in detail everything I did. He said I’m just like my mother (an alcoholic who ended up losing her marriage and career, ended up in rehab and in the hospital with a stroke from drinking and now can’t walk. I don’t drink much, but he meant this in a "I ruined my life" way). I was so deep in shame and grief that I fully believed I deserved all of this, and I wanted to make him feel better any way I could.
A few days after my confession, he confessed that 2 weeks before our wedding he got drunk and got a blowjob from a mutual friend in a hot tub. I told him it’s okay, what I did was much worse. This girl has large breast implants (I have very small breasts). Shortly after this we had sex again and he told me it would be okay if I got a boob job. He also told me he wants to finish inside of me without protection, something we’ve never done because I don’t want to get pregnant. I told him I’m not comfortable with that because plan B would make me sick (I had lost 15 pounds by this point) but he said we’d need to find a way to make it happen. At one point during sex, he started taking a video and handed me the phone to hold. I gave it back to him and he focused it on my face. Afterwards I asked him why he did that, and he said he would post the video online if I ever did this again. (He later said he would never actually do that, he just said it out of anger).
It’s important to note that there were also times he was very kind and caring throughout this- he would try to get me to eat, to go on walks, to calm my breathing. He told me I wasn’t a monster or terrible person and he’s willing to work on forgiving me and moving past this. I know that the things he said were hurtful but he wasn’t going to act on them.
He wanted me to confess everything to my best friend, so I went over and told her everything. I thought she would never look at me again. I tried to tell her some of the things I was doing to show remorse, but she grew increasingly concerned and said I was being abused. She had me stop sharing my location with him and brought me to a hotel. She told some friends what was going on and they also came and told me his reaction isn’t okay. They asked if he’d ever acted like this before, and I shared that a few years ago he grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me and yelled "stop" during an argument, but other than some yelling and once punching a wall, nothing really bad.
My husband then called me and was very upset that I disappeared. He said he would drive to every hotel in the area and pull the fire alarms to find me.
Over the next week I stayed away, but I kept thinking in my mind that his reaction was valid because of the horrible things I did. So I called him and tried to explain that his reaction was too strong and we needed to work through this in a healthy way. He agreed and immediately came and picked me up.
We spent the next month attempting to reconcile. My friends were upset with me that I went back so suddenly, which I am ashamed about- I wanted to believe more than anything that my husband and I could work through our problems and be happy again.
I believed him when he said he would get a job, stop smoking weed, and we would both focus on our codependency and rebuilding trust.
One quick note- he confided in a close mutual friend about everything going on, and he told me this mutual friend believed he was entitled to feeling/acting this way and that it didn’t cross a line. Later, I spoke to this friend and learned that he didn’t know about 90% of the information, and is now very concerned about my husband’s reaction.
A few weeks in, I noticed my BS would fall back on certain behaviors, such as hiding his smoking and being more codependent than ever. If I asked for space to process things he would get upset.
During this process we spoke at length about my affair. BS wanted as many details as possible, but since I had suppressed it for so long it was difficult to remember everything. Last week, I sat down at my computer and went through old photos, calendars, social media, etc to build a detailed timeline (there were no more physical details, just details of remembering the emotional aspects and all locations). I read him this timeline to ensure that if he forgave me, he forgave everything.
After this, he confessed a few more things himself: he went to strip clubs twice alone to get lap dances (once a few weeks before our wedding and once last year). Also, once on tour he tried to kiss a girl on the tour as she was going up to her hotel room but she denied him (she is engaged). He also has been flirting with a friends’ fiancée for a while over instagram. He deleted the messages but he said he would respond to her stories, try to flirt with her, talk about drinking and showing her around our city, and she didn’t flirt back or reciprocate. There have also been small instances in the past, like a short EA he had with a coworker in 2016 that he told me about (after I pressed him) where he would flirt with her over text and drive her home alone after parties when she was drinking at 3 am (she lived 30 min away). There are some smaller instances as well that don’t need mentioning, and a few times in the last few years he has expressed that he desires other women and sexual experiences that he missed out on, and almost left me to have those experiences.
I told him last week that it seems we are beyond reconciliation and we should separate with intent to divorce. He does not want that. I’m in therapy and still trying to process everything because I’m still not sure how I feel. I guess I’m coming here to gain some clarity. Up until now, I believed we had a wonderful relationship and marriage despite my biggest shameful secret. He has always been a loving affectionate caring husband.
Note: some might wonder why I never had sex with AP. I was sexually assaulted when I was 14, he tried to rape me but I was able to escape the car before it got that far. However, since other sexual acts happened, I always viewed myself as "dirty" and "broken" and that those acts didn’t "matter". Sex was the only thing that mattered and was something I gave to my boyfriend/husband only. I no longer think this way but I’m in therapy to explore this further as I’ve never processed or healed from this
